Boulder Weekly 12.2.21

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Project Censored’s Top 10 stories show old patterns alive and well Local troubadours Bonnie and Taylor Sims go viral, p. 21

Gift these local comestibles, p. 32

GI MaryJane: Should stoners be allowed in the U.S. Army? p. 38

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news:

Project Censored’s Top 10 stories show old patterns alive and well

by Paul Rosenberg, senior editor of Random Lengths News

Safe, full capacity dining, and outdoor patio.

Bar open.

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buzz:

How local troubadours Bonnie and Taylor Sims went viral

by Adam Perry

nibbles:

Beat the supply chain blues with the best locally crafted food and drink stocking stuffers

by John Lehndorff

beer:

Hog Heaven Imperial Red IPA returns for a limited time

by Michael J. Casey

weed between the lines:

The U.S. Army doesn’t like to recruit cannabis users—but the argument against them is losing ground

by Will Brendza

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departments 5 Guest Opinion: Open space development isn’t a solution for inequity 25 Arts & Culture: ‘Christmas with The King’s Singers’ 27 Events: What to do when there’s ‘nothing’ to do . . .

29 Film: ‘Citizen Kane’ returns to The Criterion Collection 30 Astrology: by Rob Brezsny 31 Savage Love: Past tense 37 Food and Drink: Caprese panini and Vietnamese chilled noodle salad @ Community Table Kitchen BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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Publisher, Fran Zankowski Circulation Manager, Cal Winn

T

imothy Thomas’ “opinion” in the October 7, 2021 issue of Boulder Weekly (“Open Space, CU South and civil rights: A first step towards ‘Just Sustainability’ in Boulder”) seems takes us to new heights in Boulder’s political theater of the absurd in his attempt to make “Civil Rights” trump (no pun intended) environmental conservation.

He takes issue that the same Boulder Liberal White people who have often taken his side in civil rights have now somehow betrayed them because of their strong stance on environmental concerns. Thomas stated: “Building on vacant land (aka open space) will do the same,” aka provide “higher levels of regional geographic equity.” His theory is that blocking further development on Boulder open space betrays African Americans and minorities by not affording them low income housing. If we take this argument to its extreme we can have any minority or special interest group demanding that coal and the combustion engines be maintained as an exemption to clean energy and electric cars if somehow they perceive their interests are diminished by such measures. In that case if we grant such a large loophole or out-clause for environmental protection that we will have no environment protection left at all.

Thomas cites a previous Boulder Weekly article, “Black in Boulder,” and quoted the author: “people in Boulder pride themselves on being very liberal, very progressive . . .

EDITORIAL Editor-in-Chief, Brendan Joel Kelley Managing Editor, Caitlin Rockett News Editor, Will Brendza Food Editor, John Lehndorff Contributing Writers: Peter Alexander, Dave Anderson, Emma Athena, Rob Brezsny, Michael J. Casey, Angela K. Evans, Jim Hightower, Jodi Hausen, Karlie Huckels, Dave Kirby, John Lehndorff, Sara McCrea, Rico Moore, Amanda Moutinho, Katie Rhodes, Leland Rucker, Dan Savage, Alan Sculley, Tom Winter, Gary Zeidner SALES AND MARKETING Market Development Manager, Kellie Robinson Account Executives, Matthew Fischer, Carter Ferryman Advertising Coordinator, Corey Basciano Mrs. Boulder Weekly, Mari Nevar PRODUCTION Art Director, Susan France Senior Graphic Designer, Mark Goodman CIRCULATION TEAM Dave Hastie, Dan Hill, George LaRoe, Jeffrey Lohrius, Elizabeth Ouslie, Rick Slama BUSINESS OFFICE Bookkeeper, Regina Campanella Founder/CEO, Stewart Sallo Editor-at-Large, Joel Dyer December 2, 2021 Volume XXIX, Number 17 As Boulder County's only independently owned newspaper, Boulder Weekly is dedicated to illuminating truth, advancing justice and protecting the First Amendment through ethical, no-holds-barred journalism, and thought-provoking opinion writing. Free every Thursday since 1993, the Weekly also offers the county's most comprehensive arts and entertainment coverage.

Read the print version, or visit boulderweekly.com. Boulder Weekly does not accept unsolicited editorial submissions. If you're interested in writing for the paper, please send queries to: editorial@boulderweekly.com. Any materials sent to Boulder Weekly become the property of the newspaper.

Open space development isn’t a solution for inequity

By Brett Kingstone

I think that the idea of liberalism sometimes blinds to the notion of where people in this community contribute to the perpetuation of white privilege or white supremacy.”

To a certain extent I agree with his argument, and so does Malcom X who warned us more than 50 years ago: “The worst enemy” that we have is “these White liberals.” Dr. King echoed his sentiments referring to the “polite racism” of White liberals who pandered defeatist policies to African Americans to pacify them rather than treat them as equals in both their communities and their corporations. However, accusing Boulder residents of supsee OPINION Page 6

690 South Lashley Lane, Boulder, CO, 80305 p 303.494.5511 f 303.494.2585 editorial@boulderweekly.com www.boulderweekly.com Boulder Weekly is published every Thursday. No portion may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. © 2021 Boulder Weekly, Inc., all rights reserved.

Boulder Weekly welcomes your correspondence via email (letters@ boulderweekly.com) or the comments section of our website at www.boulderweekly.com. Preference will be given to short letters (under 300 words) that deal with recent stories or local issues, and letters may be edited for style, length and libel. Letters should include your name, address and telephone number for verification. We do not publish anonymous letters or those signed with pseudonyms. Letters become the property of Boulder Weekly and will be published on our website.

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DECEMBER 2, 2021

porting “White Supremacy” is about as outrageous as accusing Donald Trump of being a “Marxist.”

Since the civil rights movement and the “War on Poverty” brought in a massive new wave of social welfare programs, we still find ourselves with gross inequities in minority incomes and in some cases complete deprivation of the very groups that we have been trying to “help.”The Native American community has been completely decimated by social welfare. Rather than instilling pride and work ethic we have destroyed both with paying people to simply stay home. The family unit has been decimated, teenage pregnancy has skyrocketed and drug addiction has become epidemic. Prior to the 1960s, African Americans actually had a lower divorce rate and higher rate of both a father and mother in the home. Social welfare and “special incentive programs” created monetary incentives for unwed and unemployed mothers and resulted in the perpetuation of poverty in the very neighborhoods we intended to help.

The way to achieve total equality is to simply TREAT PEOPLE EQUALLY. In my previous technology company we had an African American CFO of Jamaican ancestry, a Hispanic American Vice President of International Sales, a Filipino American Comptroller and an Israeli American head of our engineering department. I left out genders because this is Boulder, but for the record more than half of our top executives were women. The Chief Operating Officer, Eman Dillon, who leads my current real estate development company, Max King Realty, is a Muslim American l

Egyptian immigrant. Nobody got their job and/or promotion because of their racial background or gender.

They were rewarded because they were simply the brightest, hardest working and most capable members of my staff.

In summary: THEY EARNED IT. People were promoted equally for their competence and capability. They were motivated by the fairness of this policy and the company prospered accordingly.

My two favorite philosophers were Albert Einstein and Richard Pryor. You might think that odd but both were brilliant and many years ahead of their contemporaries.

Einstein stated: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.” Pryor stated: “How long, how long will this Bullshit go on!” It has been 50 years since these so called social welfare/equity programs and incentives have been initiated. THEY DO NOT WORK! We are still here today debating the same problems and asking for more of the same old failed solutions. It is time to stop both the insanity and the Bullshit.

—This opinion column does not necessarily reflect the views of Boulder Weekly.

CORRECTION: In the I Love Local Guide to the Holidays (November 17, 2021), we erroneously stated that Santa’s House Boulder, hosted by the Pi Beta Phi Sorority House at CU Boulder, would be taking place this year. It will not, due to COVID restrictions. We apologize for any inconvenience.

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

The new normal is more normalized censorship Project Censored’s Top 10 stories show old patterns alive and well

By Paul Rosenberg, senior editor of Random Lengths News

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roject Censored’s co-directors, Mickey Huff and Andy Lee Roth, title their introduction to this year’s edition of State of the Free Press, “A Return to News Normalcy?” drawing a direct parallel between our world today to that of post-World War I America, “When the United States faced another raging pandemic and economic recession,” with other sources of tumult as well: “The United States then had experienced a crackdown on civil liberties and free speech in the form of Espionage and Sedition Acts; racial tensions flared during the Red Summer of 1919 as violence erupted from Chicago to Tulsa; Prohibition was the law of the land; and the first wave of US feminism ended with the passage of the 19th Amendment.” At the time, they noted, “People yearned for a return to ‘normalcy,’ as then–presidential hopeful Warren G. Harding proclaimed.”

But it was not to be. “The desire for simpler times, however, was more a phantom than a reality, as millions of Americans ultimately had to adjust to an ever- and fast-changing world,” including a rapidly changing media landscape—most notably the explosion of radio. And we should expect much the same. Every major change in the media landscape has brought with it the promise of expanded horizons and democratic possibility—the potential for a broader, more inclusive public conversation— only to see many of the old patterns of division, exclusion and demonization recur in new ways as well as old, as recent revelations about Facebook vividly remind us.

Project Censored isn’t alone in drawing parallels to a century ago, of course. The pandemic above all has expanded journalistic horizons, as a matter of necessity. To a lesser extent, the threat to American democracy—part of a worldwide trend of democratic backsliding—has done so as well. But though some have expanded their horizons, many more continue as if little or nothing has fundamentally changed. Day-to-day news stories perpetuate the fantasy that normal has already returned. And in one sense they’re right: The normal patterns of exclusion and suppression that Project Censored has been tracking for over 40 years continue to dominate, with even the latest wrinkles fitting into well-established, if evolving, broad patterns that are depressingly familiar.

These patterns are reflected in Project CenBOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

sored’s top ten list, with two stories each about labor struggles, racism, threats to health, the environment and free speech. Yes, that’s 12 stories, not 10, because some stories fit into more than one pattern—and some readers will surely find more patterns as well.

Several stories this year deal with topics that have gotten widespread attention—but with aspects that have been virtually, or entirely ignored. The number one story, for example, deals with prescription drug costs, a widely covered story, but with a significant difference in focus: how much those costs translate to in lost lives. The number nine story deals with police violence against people of color, but with a new focus that’s actually quite old: vicious police dog attacks. The number four story deals with climate change, again with a different focus: how heavily-industrialized nations like the U.S. “have effectively colonized the global atmospheric commons for the sake of their own industrial growth.”

The point of Project Censored has never been just to expose significant stories that have been ignored, but rather to expose them as portals to a wider landscape of understanding and action. In that spirit, here is our summary of this year’s top ten censored stories:

of Amerisource-Bergen, a drug distributor. “[E]ven with Medicare insurance, what seniors pay is linked to a drug’s price,” the study explained, which allowed them “to model how cost-related nonadherence would change under policies that would reduce drug prices, such as Medicare negotiation.” The study focused on five medical conditions that “significantly affect seniors and for which effective pharmaceutical treatments are available,” including three types of heart disease, chronic kidney disease, and type B diabetes.

“The good news is that policy changes can curb the power of Big Pharma, resulting in far fewer avoidable deaths,” Stancil reported. “Medicare negotiation is projected to reduce drug prices and seniors’ cost-sharing, which could prevent nearly 94,000 seniors’ deaths annually and save $475.9 billion,” the study stated as one of its key findings.

“As a model for policymakers, the study pointed specifically to the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act (H.R. 3),” which passed the House in December 2019, but died in the Senate, Project Censored noted. It’s been reintroduced after Joe Biden “declined to include Medicare negotiation in his $1.8 trillion American Families Plan proposal,” they explained.

A May 2021 op-ed in The Hill, co-authored

by Representative Peter Welch (D-Vt), cited the studies figures on preventable deaths and explained its basic framework: H.R. 3 would limit the annual out-of-pocket costs for Medicare beneficiaries to no more than $2,000, and would establish a top negotiated price for drugs at no more than 120 percent of the average of six other wealthy nations . . .

H.R. 3 would support and protect innovation and new drug development by investing some of the expected savings into the world-class research funded through the NIH. But this op-ed was a rare exception.“The public’s understanding of the debate surrounding H.R. 3 and other proposed legislation designed to control inflation in prescription drug prices ought to be informed by accurate information about the grim repercussions of continuing the status quo,” Project Censored noted. “Sadly, the corporate media have failed to provide the public with such information for far too long, and the consequences could turn out to be deadly for millions of seniors.”

1. Prescription drug costs set to become a leading cause of death for elderly Americans

“Soaring prescription drug costs have been widely reported by corporate news outlets,” Project Censored notes, but they’ve utterly ignored the staggering resulting cost in human lives. More than 1.1 million seniors enrolled in Medicare programs could die prematurely in the next decade due to unaffordable prescription drugs, according to a November 2020 study reported on by Kenny Stancil for Common Dreams. “As medicines become increasingly expensive, patients skip doses, ration prescriptions, or quit treatment altogether,” Project Censored explained, a phenomenon known as “cost-related nonadherence,” which will become “a leading cause of death in the U.S., ahead of diabetes, influenza, pneumonia, and kidney disease” by 2030, according to the study by the nonprofit West Health Policy Center and Xcenda, the research arm l

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2. Journalists investigating financial crimes threatened by global elites

Financial crimes of global elites, involving the flow of dirty money through some of the world’s see PROJECT CENSORED Page 10 l

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most powerful banks, have made major headlines in recent years, most notably with the Panama Papers in 2016 and the FinSen Files in 2020. But we’d know a great deal more if not for the flood of threats faced by journalists doing this work—a major story that hasn’t been told in America’s corporate media, despite a detailed report from Foreign Policy Centre (FPC), “Unsafe for Scrutiny,” released in November 2020.

The report was based on a survey of 63 investigative journalists from 41 countries, which found that 71 percent had experienced threats and/or harassment while doing their investigations, with a large portion of those (73 percent) experiencing legal threats as well. Its findings were described by Spencer Woodman in an article for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

“The report found that legal threats are chief among the types of harassment facing journalists conducting financial investigations, and often seek to exploit a skewed balance of power between often-underfunded reporting enterprises and the legal might of attorneys hired by the world’s wealthiest people and corporations,” Woodman wrote. “Focusing on frivolous cases known as ‘strategic lawsuits against public participation,’ or SLAPPs, the report asserts that such actions ‘can create a similar chilling effect on media freedom to more overt violence or attack.’” Legal threats are often communicated via private letters, “and, if successful in achieving their aim, the public will never know,” the report said.

Physical threats and online harassment were also a grave concern, but they were geographically uneven. “While no journalists surveyed in North America reported physical threats, 60 percent of respondents working in sub-Saharan Africa, and 50 percent of respondents from North Africa and the Middle East region reported threats of physical attack,” Woodman noted. Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered by a car bomb in Malta in October 2017, but he added, “The report asserts that an assassination is often not a starting point for those seeking to silence reporters but instead a crime committed after a pattern of escalating threats, noting that Caruana Galizia had faced numerous legal threats and actions and that her family is still fighting 25 lawsuits over her reporting.”

Project Censored noted Galizia’s murder along with that of Slovak investigative journalist Ján Kuciak, adding that “According to FPC’s report, an additional thirty reporters from Brazil, Russia, India, Ukraine, Mexico, and other countries who were researching financial corruption have been murdered since 2017.”

As for legal threats, “Unlike Canada, Australia, and certain US states, the United Kingdom has not passed anti-SLAPP legislation, making its courts 10

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an attractive venue for elites seeking to use the law to bully journalists into silence,” Project Censored noted, citing a May 8, 2021, Guardian column by Nick Cohen which described the UK’s court system as “the censorship capital of the democratic world.”

Cohen in turn cited the case of financial reporter Catherine Belton, author of the 2020 book, Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West. “As Cohen explained, in response, a host of Putin’s super-wealthy associates are now bombarding Belton with one lawsuit after another,” Project Censored observed.

The silence about this silencing has been deafening, Project Censored noted. There has been some coverage overseas, but “To date, however, no major commercial newspaper or broadcast outlet in the United States has so much as mentioned the FPC’s report.”

3. Historic wave of wildcat strikes for workers’ rights

After millions of people were designated ‘essential workers’ when the U.S. went into lockdown in March 2020, thousands of wildcat strikes erupted to challenge dangerous working conditions and chronic low wages, exacerbated by refusal to protect against COVID-19 and cutting or sharply increasing the cost of medical insurance, for those who had it. A further strike surge was driven by “Black and Brown workers using digital technologies to organize collective actions as a way to press some of the demands for racial justice raised by Black Lives Matter and George Floyd protestors,” Project Censored noted. The nation’s fourth busiest port, Charleston, S.C., shut down during George Floyd’s funeral on June 9, for example.

At the labor news website Payday Report, Mike Elk created a continuously updated COVID-19 Strike Wave Interactive Map, which had identified “1,100 wildcat strikes as of March 24, 2021, many of which the corporate media have chosen to ignore,” according to Project Censored, including “more than 600 strikes or work stoppages by workers in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement,” in June 2020 alone, according to Elk. “While local and regional newspapers and broadcast news outlets have reported on particular local actions, corporate news coverage has failed to DECEMBER 2, 2021

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report the strike wave as a wave, at no time connecting the dots of all the individual, seemingly isolated work stoppages and walkouts to create a picture of the overarching trend,” Project Censored reported.

The sole exception where there was national coverage was in August 2020 when highly-paid baseball and basketball pro athletes walked out in violation of their contracts to protest the shooting of Jacob Blake by Wisconsin police. The coverage ended quickly once they returned a few days later.

Wildcat strikes occur when workers simply stop working, often in response to a specific incident, such as employer actions putting lives at risk by skimping on protective gear or attempting to cut workers’ healthcare. The situation was exacerbated by the Donald Trump administration’s failure to issue mandates requiring specific safety measures, as reported by Michael Sainato at The Guardian.

Examples covered by Elk that Project Censored cited include: · In Santa Rosa, California, 700 healthcare workers went on strike because their hospital lacked sufficient personal protective equipment to keep employees safe, and management warned employees that their insurance fees would be doubled if they wanted continued coverage for their families. · In St. Joseph, Missouri, 120 sheet metal workers went on strike due to management’s repeated attempts to cut their healthcare benefits during the pandemic. · In May 2020, workers at 50 McDonald’s, Burger King, Starbucks, and other fast food establishments throughout Florida staged a day-long strike for higher pay and better protective equipment. · In April 2021, employees at Chicago-area Peet’s Coffee & Tea locations staged a coordinated work stoppage along with the Fight for $15 campaign to demand workplace protections and quarantine pay.

Furthermore, Elk noted that the 600 strikes in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement “is likely a severe underestimation as many non-union Black and Brown workers are now calling out en masse to attend Black Lives Matter protests without it ever being reported in the press or on social media.”

Elk also noted that “[M]any Black workers interviewed by Payday Report say that, once again, white labor leaders are failing to understand non-traditional organizing that has developed from viral social media movements . . . Instagram automation and similar see PROJECT CENSORED Page 12 BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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automation on Facebook and Twitter help to build a huge following for grassroots movements, so something that had no following a month ago can suddenly go viral and reach millions of people within hours or even minutes.”

That threat empowers even solitary individual workers, Tulsa-based Black filmmaker and activist Marq Lewis told Elk: He says he personally knows of multiple examples of Black workers in Tulsa approaching their bosses without the support of a union and winning changes in their workplace.

“A lot of people may say this is not a strike, well, you tell that to these workers now who are getting their grievances heard,” Lewis says.

That’s the censored story within the story within the story.

4. “Climate debtor” nations have “colonized” the atmosphere

The United States and other developed countries in the global north are responsible for 92 percent of all the excess carbon dioxide emissions driving global warming, according to a study in the September issue of The Lancet Planetary Health. The U.S. alone was responsible for 40 percent, followed by Russia and Germany (8 percent each), the United Kingdom (7 percent), and Japan (5 percent).

The study’s author, economic anthropologist Jason Hickel, told Sarah Lazare, of In These Times, that his research began from the premises that “the atmosphere is a common resource” and that “all people should have equal access” to a fair share of it.

He calculated each nation’s fair share of a sustainable global carbon budget, based on population, along with an analysis of “territorial emissions from 1850 to 1969, and consumption-based emissions from 1970 to 2015.” In turn, this was used to calculate “the extent to which each country has overshot or undershot its fair share,” according to the study.

Thus the above list of the largest climate debtors.

The results, he told In These Times, show that “the countries of the Global North have ‘stolen’ a big chunk of the atmospheric fair-shares of poorer countries, and on top of that are responsible for the vast majority of excess emissions . . . [T]hey have effectively colonized the global atmospheric commons for the sake of their own industrial growth.”

In contrast, the study found that “most countries in the Global South were within their boundary fair shares, including India and China (although China will overshoot soon).” The leading climate creditors to date are India (34 percent of global “undershoots”), China (11 percent), Bangladesh and Indonesia (5 percent each) and Nigeria (4 percent).

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“High-income countries must not only reduce emissions to zero more quickly than other countries, but they must also pay down their climate debts,” the study said. “Just as many of these countries have relied on the appropriation of labour and resources from the Global South for their own economic growth, they have also relied on the appropriation of global atmospheric commons, with consequences that harm the Global South disproportionately.”

“Other studies and analyses have pointed to the disproportionate responsibility of the Global North, and wealthy countries, for driving the climate crisis,” Lazare noted. Most dramatically, a 2015 study

by Oxfam International “found that the poorest half of the world’s population — roughly 3.5 billion people — are to blame for just 10 percent of ‘total global emissions attributed to individual consumption,’ yet they ‘live overwhelmingly in the countries most vulnerable to climate change.’” She reported. “In contrast, the richest 10 percent of people in the world are responsible for roughly 50 percent of global emissions.”

“Corporate news outlets appear to have entirely ignored the findings of Jason Hickel’s Lancet study,” Project Censored noted. “Although it may be imperative to act “quickly and together” to reduce carbon emissions, as Vice President Harris asserted at the April 2021 climate summit, corporate media have failed to cover Hickel’s cutting-edge research, which demonstrates that the United States and other would-be leaders in addressing climate change are in fact, as the world’s worst climate debtors, disproportionately responsible for climate breakdown.”

5. Microplastics and toxic chemicals increasingly prevalent in world’s oceans

According to a pair of scientific studies published in the summer of 2020, microplastic particles and a family of toxic chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS have become more widespread in the world’s oceans than previously realized and have begun to contaminate the global seafood supply. The two problems are related because PFAS—a family of highly stable “forever chemicals” with more than 4,700 known members—can occur as microplastics, they can stick to microplastic particles in water, and are involved in the production of plastics.

In July 2020, a German-American study pub-

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lished in the scholarly journal Environmental Science & Technology revealed that PFAS—which are used in a range of products including carpets, furniture, clothing, food packaging and nonstick coatings— have now been found in the Arctic Ocean.

“This discovery worries scientists,” Project Censored explains, “because it means that PFAS can reach any body of water anywhere in the world and that such chemicals are likely present in our water supply.” This is concerning because, as Daniel Ross reported for Truthout, there are “Known human health impacts . . . include certain cancers, liver damage, thyroid problems and increased risk of asthma. As endocrine disruptors, these chemicals have been linked to increased risk of severe COVID-19.”

Ross cited a number of other studies as well, noting that, “Emerging research suggests that one important pathway [for PFAS spreading] is through the air and in rainwater,” and that they had been widely detected in China, the U.S., and elsewhere.

“PFASs are probably detectable in ‘all major water supplies’ in the U.S.,” according to an Environmental Working Group study, Ross reported.

“What’s more, over 200 million Americans could be drinking water containing PFAS above a level EWG scientists believe is safe, according to the organization’s most recent findings.”

The second study, in August 2020, also published in Environmental Science & Technology, came from researchers at the QUEX Institute, a partnership between the University of Exeter and the University of Queensland. They looked for and found microplastics (pieces of plastic, less than five millimeters in length—about the size of a sesame seed) in five seafood products sold in Australian markets: crabs, oysters, prawns, squid, and sardines— which had the highest concentration. According to the study’s lead author, as reported

by Robby Berman in Medical News Today, a seafood eater with an average serving “could be exposed to . . . up to 30 mg of plastic when eating sardines,” about as much as a grain of rice. “We do not fully understand the risks to human health of ingesting plastic, but this new method [they used for detecting selected plastics] will make it easier for us to find out,” another co-author said. “Roughly 17 percent of the protein humans consume worldwide is seafood,” Berman noted. “The findings, therefore, suggest people who regularly eat seafood are also regularly eating plastic.”

Aside from The Guardian, “no major news outlet has paid attention to the topic of microplastics in seafood,” Project Censored noted, referring to an October 2020 story by Graham Readfearn, reporting on a new Australian study indicating that at least 14 million tons of microplastics are likely see PROJECT CENSORED Page 14 BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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sitting on the ocean floor—“more than 30 times as much plastic at the bottom of the world’s ocean than there is floating at the surface.” However, the study’s co-author, Dr. Denise Hardesty, “said the amount of plastic on the ocean floor was relatively small compared to all the plastics being released, suggesting the deep-sea sediments were not currently a major resting place for plastics,” Readfearn reported. “Leaders from more than 70 countries signed a voluntary pledge in September to reverse biodiversity loss which included a goal to stop plastic entering the ocean by 2050,” he noted, but major countries including the United States, Brazil, China, Russia, India, and Australia had not signed on.

6. Canary Mission blacklists pro Palestinian activists, chilling free speech rights

Before the “critical race theory” moral panic fueled a nationwide uprising to censor discussions of race in education, there was an opposite moral panic decrying “cancel culture” stifling certain people—especially in education.

But even at the peak of the “cancel culture” panic, perhaps the most canceled people anywhere in America—pro-Palestinian activists and sympathizers—got virtually no attention.

Even though a well-funded, secretly run blacklist website, known as Canary Mission, explicitly targeted thousands of individuals—overwhelmingly students—with dossiers expressly intended to ruin their careers before they even began, and which “have been used in interrogations by Israeli security officials,” according to The Forward, a Jewish publication. They’ve also been used by the FBI, as reported by The Intercept.

The website, established in 2015, “seeks to publicly discredit critics of Israel as ‘terrorists’ and ‘anti-Semites,’ Project Censored noted, but its careless style of accusation has caused a backlash, even among pro-Israeli Jews. “While some of those listed on the site are prominent activists, others are students who attended a single event, or even student government representatives suspected of voting for resolutions that are critical of Israel,” the Forward reported. More than that, it reported three examples when Canary Mission was apparently retaliating against critics, including Jews.

But by far, its main targets are Palestinians, particularly activists involved with the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions or BDS movement that works to peacefully pressure Israel—similarly to South Africa in the 1980s—to obey international law and respect Palestinians’ human rights. As the Intercept reported in 2018, “While Canary Mission promotes itself as a group working against anti-Semitism, the blacklist’s effective goal is to clamp down on growing support for Palestine in the Unit14

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ed States by intimidating and tarnishing Palestinian rights advocates with the brush of bigotry.”

While the FBI told the Intercept that it “only investigates activity which may constitute a federal crime or pose a threat to national security,” this didn’t match up with its actions. “If the FBI was concerned about criminal activity among the student activists, its agents made no indication of that in the interviews,” The Intercept reported. “They did, however, ask questions that echoed far-right propaganda about unproven links between pro-Palestine activist groups and militant groups.”

The list itself has had a chilling effect on First Amendment rights, another Intercept story reported. “A survey of over 60 people profiled on Canary Mission, conducted by the group Against Canary Mission, found that 43 percent of respondents said they toned down their activism because of the blacklist, while 42 percent said they suffered acute anxiety from being placed on the website.” Some have even received death threats.

“For many otherwise unknown activists, a Canary Mission profile is their most visible online presence,” Project Censored reported, “‘It’s the first thing that comes up when you Google my name, the claim that I’m a terrorist supporter and an extremist,’ one former activist on Palestinian issues told The Intercept.”

“Beyond Canary Mission,” Projected Censored noted, “a variety of pro-Israel organizations that seek to suppress pro-Palestinian activism have pursued litigation against chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine,” as reported in The Nation by Lexi McMenamin. A highlighted example at UCLA demanded the release of the names of speakers at a national conference, whose identities had been protected “in order to prevent them from being put on no-fly lists, potentially denied entry to other countries, or contacted by the FBI over their organizing work.” In March 2021 a California judge rejected that demand, noting that disclosure of their names “would violate their rights to freedom of association, anonymous speech, and privacy.”

Project Censored also cited a May 2021 federal court ruling that the state of Georgia cannot compel groups or individuals who contract with public entities to disavow support for the BDS movement against Israel, finding that the state’s law “places an unconstitutional incidental burden on speech.”

Georgia is one of 35 states with similar anti-BDS laws or executive orders.

“Heightened violence in Israel/Palestine in May

DECEMBER 2, 2021

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2021 has focused attention on powerful pro-Israel media biases in US news coverage, but Canary Mission and legal efforts to suppress pro-Palestinian activism have nonetheless received minimal corporate news coverage,” Project Censored summarized, citing a handful of exceptions, a New York Times and a Washington Post opinion, plus two New York Times articles “dating back to 2018, [that] made passing mention of Canary Mission, as a ‘shadowy organization,’” But, Project Censored concluded, “Aside from this coverage, major establishment news outlets have provided no substantive reports on the role played by Canary Mission and other pro-Israel organizations in stifling the First Amendment rights of pro-Palestinian activists.”

7. Google’s union-busting methods revealed

In 2018, Google dropped its long-time slogan, “Don’t be evil” from its code of conduct. In 2019, Google hired IRI Consultants, a union avoidance firm, “amid a wave of unprecedented worker organizing at the company,” as Vice’s Motherboard put it in January 2021, while reporting on leaked files from IRI that provided a disturbing picture of how far Google may have strayed in its willingness sabotage its workers’ rights. The 1935 National Labor Relations Act makes it illegal for companies to spy on employees and guarantees workers the right to organize and engage in collective bargaining.

“Nevertheless,” Project Censored noted, “companies like Google attempt to circumvent the law by hiring union avoidance firms like IRI Consultants as independent contractors to engage in surveillance and intimidation on their behalf.” “[E]mployers in the United States spend roughly $340 million on union avoidance consultants each year,” Lauren Kaori Gurley reported for Motherboard, but their practices are apparently so disreputable that IRI doesn’t identify its clients on its website “beyond saying the firm has been hired by universities, renewable energy companies, auto-makers, ‘the nation’s largest food manufacturers,’ and ‘several top ten worldwide retailers,’ she reported.

“Consultants specialize in operating in the grey areas of the law,” John Logan, a Professor of Labor and Employment Studies at San Francisco State told Gurley. “They’re not quite illegal but they’re sort of bending the law if they’re not breaking it.”

“The [leaked] documents show that the firm collected incredibly detailed information on 83 Seattle hospital employees, including their ‘personality, temperament, motivations, ethnicity, family background, spouses’ employment, finances, health issues, work ethic, job performance, disciplinary history, and involvement in union activity in the leadup to a union election,’” Project Censored noted, see PROJECT CENSORED Page 16

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“including descriptions of workers as ‘lazy,’ ‘impressionable,’ ‘money oriented,’ and ‘a single mother.’”

The documents Motherboard reported on didn’t come from Google, but from two Seattle-based hospitals owned by Conifer Health Solutions, who hired IRI on the sly—a common practice.

“Tracking the union avoidance firms behind anti-union campaigns is intentionally made difficult by firms that subcontract out work to other firms that hire independent contractors to avoid federal reporting requirements laid out by the Department of Labor and shield themselves from public scrutiny,” Motherboard explained, adding that the union organizing the workers had no idea of IRI’s involvement.

“Google is not the only Big Tech company to enlist union avoidance consultants in recent years. In fall 2020 and spring 2021, employees at Amazon’s massive fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama launched a much-publicized unionization effort,” Project Censored noted. “As John Logan detailed in a lengthy article for LaborOnline, Amazon responded to the Bessemer drive by spending at least $3,200 per day on anti-union consultants Russ Brown and Rebecca Smith and by bringing in a second union-busting consulting firm,” as well as hiring “one of the largest law firms in the country specializing in union avoidance.” Employees voted more than 2-1 against joining the union, but the election was overturned for a set of eight labor law violations after Project Censored’s book went to the publisher—a decision that Amazon is appealing.

“There has been some establishment press coverage of large corporations hiring union-avoidance firms to undermine workplace organizing, mostly focusing on tech giants like Google and Amazon,” Project Censored noted, including late 2019 stories in the New York Times and Washington Post reporting that Google had hired IRI, and a February 23, 2020 New York Times Magazine cover story entitled “the Great Google Revolt,” which “mentioned in passing” the use of anti-union consultants by Google and others in Silicon Valley. “However, there has been no corporate news coverage whatsoever of the sensational leaks that Motherboard released in January, and there has been very little in-depth corporate media reporting on the use of union-busting consultants in general,” Project Censored summed up, concluding, “The documents leaked to Motherboard confirm and greatly elaborate upon what labor organizers and educators have suspected of the specific tactics the union-busting firms employ.”

8. Pfizer bullies South American governments over COVID-19 vaccine

“Pfizer has essentially held Latin American governments to ransom for access to its lifesaving COVID-19 vaccine,” Project Censored reports, the latest example of how it’s exerted undue influence to enrich itself at the expense of low- and middle-income nations going back to the 1980s, when it helped shape the intellectual property rules it’s now taking advantage of.

“Pfizer has been accused of ‘bullying’ Latin American governments in Covid vaccine negotiations and has asked some countries to put up sovereign assets, such as embassy buildings and military bases, as a guarantee against the cost of any future legal cases,” according to reporters at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

In one case it resulted in a three-month delay in reaching a deal. “For Argentina and Brazil, no national deals were agreed at all,” BIJ reported.

“Any hold-up in countries receiving vaccines means more people contracting Covid-19 and potentially dying.”

It’s normal for governments to provide some indemnity. But, “Pfizer asked l

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

for additional indemnity from civil cases, meaning that the company would not be held liable for rare adverse effects or for its own acts of negligence, fraud or malice,” BIJ reported. “This includes those linked to company practices—say if Pfizer sent the wrong vaccine or made errors during manufacturing.”

“Some liability protection is warranted, but certainly not for fraud, gross negligence, mismanagement, failure to follow good manufacturing practices,” the World Health Organization’s director of the Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law, Lawrence Gostin, told BIJ. “Companies have no right to ask for indemnity for these things.”

During negotiations, which began in June 2020, “the Argentinian government believed that, at the least, Pfizer ought to be accountable for acts of negligence on its part in the delivery and distribution of the vaccine, but, instead of offering any compromise, Pfizer ‘demanded more and more,’ according to one government negotiator,” Project Censored summarized. “That was when Pfizer called for Argentina to put up sovereign assets as collateral. Argentina broke off negotiations with Pfizer, leaving the nation’s leaders at that time without a vaccine supply for its people,” in December. “It was an extreme demand that I had only heard when the foreign debt had to be negotiated, but both in that case and in this one, we rejected it immediately,” an Argentine official told BIJ. That same month, “just after the United States approved Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, In These Times’ Sarah Lazare filed a detailed report on the history of the pharmaceutical giant’s opposition to expanding vaccine access to poor countries, beginning in the mid-1980s during the negotiations that eventually resulted in the establishment of the WTO in 1995.

“Both globally and domestically, Pfizer played an important role in promoting the idea that international trade should be contingent on strong intellectual property rules, while casting countries that do not follow U.S. intellectual property rules as engaging in ‘piracy,’” a view they promoted to multiple business networks, shielded from wider public debate. “It was not a given, at the time, that intellectual property would be included in trade negotiations,” she explained. “Many Third World countries resisted such inclusion, on the grounds that stronger intellectual property rules would protect the monopoly power of corporations and undermine domestic price controls.”

“It is difficult to think of a clearer case for suspending intellectual property laws than a global pandemic,” and “a swath of global activists, mainstream human rights groups and UN human rights experts have added their voices to the demand for a suspension of patent laws,” Lazare noted. But Pfizer was joined in its opposition by pharmaceutical trade groups and individual companies, such as Moderna, another COVID-19 vaccine maker.

As a result, “One could make a map of global poverty, lay it over a map of vaccine access, and it would be a virtual one-to-one match,” she wrote. “Once again majority Black and brown countries, by and large, are left to suffer and die.”

“Pfizer’s dealings in South America are not exactly secret,” Project Censored noted, but “As of May 2021, there has been no corporate media coverage of Pfizer’s actual dealings in South America or how the pharmaceutical giant helped establish the global intellectual property standards it now invokes to protect its control over access to the vaccine.”

Nor is this anything new, it concluded: “Big Pharma has a long, underreported track record of leaving developing nations’ medical needs unfulfilled, as Project Censored has previously documented.”

9. Police use dogs as instruments of violence, targeting people of color

The use of vicious dogs to control Black people dates back to slavery, but it’s not ancient history according to an investigative series of 13 linked reports, titled “Mauled: When Police Dogs are Weapons,” coordinated by the Marshall Project in partnership with AL.com, IndyStar, and the Invisible Institute. They found evidence that the pattern continues to this day, with disproportionate use of police dogs against people of color, often resulting in serious injury, with little or no justification. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a majority-Black city of 220,000, is the dog-bite capital of America, with a bite rate more than double the next-ranked city, Indianapolis. According to Bryn Stole and Grace Toohey’s February 2021 report: Between 2017 and 2019, Baton Rouge police dogs bit at least 146 people, see PROJECT CENSORED Page 18 BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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records show. Of those, 53 were 17 years old or younger; the youngest were just 13. Almost all of the people bitten were Black, and most were unarmed and suspected by police of nonviolent crimes like driving a stolen vehicle or burglary.

But Baton Rouge is hardly alone. Approximately 3,600 Americans annually are sent to the emergency room for severe bite injuries resulting from police dog attacks. These dog bites “can be more like shark attacks than nips from a family pet, according to experts and medical researchers,” a team of five reporters wrote in October 2020, as part of a summary of the main finding of their research. Other highlights from the series included: · “Though our data shows dog bites in nearly every state, some cities use biting dogs far more often than others.” This ranged from just one incident in Chicago from 2017 to 2019 to more than 200 in Los Angeles and more than 220 in Indianapolis. · “Most bite victims are men, and studies suggest that in some places, they have been disproportionately Black.” This includes the Ferguson, Missouri police department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff ’s Department, where it’s been found that “dogs bit non-White people almost exclusively.” · “Bites can cause life-altering injuries, even death. Dogs used in arrests are bred and trained to have a bite strong enough to punch through sheet metal.” · “Many people bitten were unarmed, accused of non-violent crimes or weren’t suspects at all.” · “Some dogs won’t stop biting and must be pulled off by a handler, worsening injuries.” · “There’s little accountability or compensation for many bite victims,” for a wide range of reasons. “Even when victims can bring cases, lawyers say they struggle because jurors tend to love police dogs,” what’s known as “the Lassie effect.”

Though the Black Lives Matter movement has significantly raised public awareness of police using disproportionate force against people of color, police “K-9 violence has received strikingly little attention from corporate news media.” There were exceptions: In October 2020, USA Today published a Marshall Project story simultaneously with the project, and in November 2020, the Washington Post ran a front-page story citing the Marshall Project’s reporting. In addition, NBC News covered Salt Lake City’s suspension of its K-9 program, “after a video circulated of a police dog biting a Black man who was kneeling on the ground with his hands held up.” But aside from these examples, “coverage appears to have been limited to local news outlets,” Project Censored concluded.

10. Activists call out legacy of racism and sexism in forced sterilization

Forced sterilization was deemed constitutional in a 1927 Supreme Court decision, Buck v. Bell, after which forced sterilizations increased dramatically, to at least 60,000 forced sterilizations in some 32 states during the 20th Century, predominantly targeting women of color. And while state laws have been changed, it’s still constitutional, and still going on today—with at least five cases of women in ICE custody in Georgia in 2019—while thousands of victims await restitution, as reports from The Conversation and YES! Magazine has documented.

“Organizations such as Project South, California Latinas for Reproductive Justice, and the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab are actively working to document the extent of this underreported problem—and to bring an end to it.” Project Censored noted. But their work is even more underreported than the problem itself.

“During the height of this wave of eugenics by means of sterilization in the U.S., forced hysterectomies were so common in the Deep South that activist Fannie Lou Hamer coined the term ‘Mississippi Appendectomy’ to describe 18

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DECEMBER 2, 2021

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

them,” Ray Levy Uyeda wrote in a YES! Magazine article, “How Organizers are Fighting an American Legacy of Forced Sterilization,” which begins with the story of Kelli Dillon. Dillon was a California prison inmate in 2001 when she underwent a procedure to remove a potentially cancerous growth—and the surgeon simultaneously performed an unauthorized hysterectomy, one of 148 forced sterilizations that year in California prisons, and one of 1,400 carried out between 1997 and 2010.

Dillon began organizing inside the women’s prison gathering testimonials from other victimized prisoners “and provided the personal accounts to staff at Justice Now that was laying the groundwork to petition for legislation that would ban the procedures in prisons,” Uyeda reported. She eventually sued the state of California for damages, and helped to shape legislation to compensate victims (finally passed this year) a story told in the 2020 documentary film, Belly of the Beast.

“All forced sterilization campaigns, regardless of their time or place, have one thing in common. They involve dehumanizing a particular subset of the population deemed less worthy of reproduction and family formation,” Alexandra Minna Stern wrote at The Conversation. Stern directs the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab, where “Our interdisciplinary team explores the history of eugenics and sterilization in the U.S. using data and stories”—35,000 of them so far captured from “historical records from North Carolina, California, Iowa and Michigan.”

The history was more complicated than one might expect, Stern explained. “At first, sterilization programs targeted white men, expanding by the 1920s to affect the same number of women as men. The laws used broad and ever-changing disability labels like ‘feeblemindedness’ and ‘mental defective.’ Over time, though, women and people of color increasingly became the target, as eugenics amplified sexism and racism,” she wrote. “It is no coincidence that sterilization rates for Black women rose as desegregation got underway.”

“California Latinas for Reproductive Justice is working to secure legislative change for victims of the state’s sterilization efforts between 1909 and 1979,” Uyeda wrote. It was signed into law after Project Censored’s book went to print, making California the third state with such legislation, following the lead of North Carolina and Virginia, in 2013 and 2015, respectively.

“The history of eugenics has been thoroughly researched and criticized by scholars and human rights activists, but coverage by the corporate media of the US practice of forced sterilization throughout the 20th century and into the 21st has tended to be limited and narrowly focused,” Project Censored noted. There was

some corporate news coverage after the ICE forced sterilization stories emerged, but generally without “any mention of the activists resisting the practice . . . Some establishment press articles on the topic of forced sterilization include comments from members of these organizations to provide context on the issue, but few spotlight the groups’ tireless organizing and record of accomplishments.” Two exceptions cited were articles from Marie Claire magazine and Refinery29, “a website targeted at younger women.” This only began to change in July 2021, as Project Censored’s book was going to print, “with the Associated Press and other establishment news outlets reporting that California is preparing to approve reparations of up to $25,000 per person to women who had been sterilized without consent.”

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NATALIE GRAY

Chompin’

at the bit

How local troubadours Bonnie and Taylor Sims went viral

by Adam Perry

B

onnie and Taylor Sims have been integral elements of the Front Range music scene for over a decade, lending their unique talents to just about anything music-related you can think of, from performing and recording to teaching lessons and helping put on summer camps for young musicians. While Taylor originally made a name for himself in Colorado singing and picking in the beloved bluegrass band Spring Creek, which emerged out of Crested Butte in Bonnie and the Clydes, in the late 2000s, and Taylor joined in 2013 when Spring Creek broke up.

Over lunch at Torchy’s in Boulder recently, Taylor recalled meeting Bonnie—a powerful singer—in the bluegrass program at South Plains College in Texas.

“I’m from West Texas and Bonnie is from north Dallas,” Taylor said. “I was 21 and she was 18. We had classes together. We had ensembles together. I lived in a house with three other guys who were also musicians and we’d end up hanging out there and picking most of the time. In West Texas there are a lot of dry counties and that happened to be one of them. She started coming over because she played mandolin.

“We did that for, like, three months before we started dating. She was dating a banjo-player friend of mine and I sort of swooped in and stole her away, as the story goes.”

trying to make it big in Nashville after graduation rather than meeting Taylor in Colorado.

“What can I do to get you to not do that?” Taylor remembers asking.

“Well, you gotta propose,” Bonnie replied, and the rest is history.

The two had planned to start a band together once Bonnie arrived in Colorado but, at the time, Spring Creek was wildly successful on the bluegrass circuit in the U.S. and Canada and remained Taylor’s

gig and also started Spring Creek, the band took off so fast that college no longer felt like a priority.

“When the fall rolled around, I didn’t want to go back to school,” he remembers. “I was, like, ‘I want to keep playing bluegrass here in the mountains.’ So I stayed, and Bonnie and I started doing the long-distance thing.”

group ever to win the Rockygrass Bluegrass Band award and the Telluride Bluegrass Band award in the same year. It also became the youngest band, and the only band west of the Mississippi, to sign with the legendary bluegrass label Rebel Records.

While Taylor toured incessantly with Spring Creek, his young bride understandably got tired of their plan to start a band together remaining on hold, and put Bonnie and the Clydes together in 2010.

“She was working at Starbucks, and she was, like, ‘Fuck this; I’m tired of waiting,’ and she started her own band,” Taylor proudly recalls.

at South Plains College and thinking about a future in music, her relationship with Taylor faced a fork in the road when she considered

see TROUBADOURS Page 22

Crested Butte in 2003 and went back to Texas for the fall semester,

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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21

TROUBADOURS from Page 21

some personal turmoil. Things started falling apart.

Things started breaking down because of different visions. It sort of dissolved and it got tough. We plateaued and burned out.” with Taylor playing guitar, singing and writing songs as a member of Bonnie and the Clydes. While the rollicking country group, with Bonnie’s passionate singing and stage-presence its focal point, became a beloved keystone of the Front Range music scene for over a decade— performing at virtually every small venue and local festival in existence—it also suffered from overexposure and, Taylor admits, a penchant for saying “yes” to just about any gig.

“We had set it up where . . . we liked to play but we set the wheels in motion where we built this machine and we felt obligated to keep it going. It was also out of force of habit, without thinking about, ‘Are we doing ourselves a disservice to be playing so much?’ And of course we were.”

Ironically, Bonnie and Taylor were not really able to make a name for themselves outside of Colorado until they happened upon an opportunity to showcase their talents in a band that has never toured and doesn’t even have an album out.

In 2018, the couple befriended producer, songwriter, and ’80s pop star Robbie Nevil, who helped them slowly break into the sync-licensing world, through a company some placements in The Vampire Diaries and some commercials—really small stuff, where it was 10 seconds or 15 seconds of a song.”

Nevil had been looking for what Sims calls “a certain kind of singer: a badass twangy country, but rocking, female singer” for a licensing-focused project called Everybody Loves an Outlaw. Nevil wanted to make a splash internationally by building a “dark country” sound

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sexy Polish thriller 365 Days in 2020, his song “I See Red”— with scorching vocals and guitar by Bonnie and Taylor Sims—became an absolute viral smash after being featured in a climactic scene.

“The song was placed in the pivotal scene in the movie,” Taylor beams, “and it was played at full volume from beginning to end, which is really rare in the soundtrack world, over this very NATALIE GRAY torrid sex scene. It’s over this scene that’s, like, mainstream fucking went crazy. The movie started picking up steam, and then on Spotify we had an Everybody Loves an Outlaw account that had been at about 15,000 streams and now . . . ” “I See Red,” which has been performed on The Voice in America and Europe and received kudos in Rolling Stone, now has over 130 million streams on Spotify. It’s a surreal experience, Taylor says, having a hit single that not only broke when most Americans were on pandemic-rules lockdown but also carries the name of what Taylor calls “for all intents and purposes, an internet band at the moment.”

Via video, Bonnie and Taylor have done “record-label meet-and-greets and funny Zoom things where we’re playing little mini-concerts for 400 Sony employees,” but capitalizing on the success of “I See Red” by taking Everybody Loves an Outlaw on the road still gives Taylor the feeling of sitting on a runway, waiting to take off. The plans regarding the debut Everybody Loves an Outlaw massive “dark country” sound Nevil manufactured in the studio into a palatable touring show (with a live band and background tracks) is a work in progress.

“If it wasn’t COVID times we’d already be touring,” Tayhaving meetings with labels and doing press all over the

DECEMBER 2, 2021

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world, and everyone says, ‘We can’t wait for you to come and tour.’ It’s just been kind of at a standstill. With Spotify, you can see where all your shit’s being played, and our biggest countries are Germany, Brazil and Poland. We’re kinda chompin’ at the bit, wanting to do it.”

In the meantime, the couple has been releasing Everybody Loves an Outlaw singles while continuing to play shows around Colorado as the Bonnie and Taylor Sims Band, including December 3 at Dazzle in Denver and December 16 at the historic Jamestown Mercantile.

“It’s our vehicle for staying attached to our fans in Colorado, and we don’t have plans to take that on the road, but we also have an album that’s in the can and ready for release, hopefully in the spring. Bonnie and the Clydes was a country band, and Bonnie and Taylor more ambiguous Americana thing.”

As Everybody Loves an Outlaw gears up to become more than just an “internet band” and the Bonnie and Taylor Sims Band continues to embrace Colorado, Taylor he and Bonnie began at South Plains College and continue taking together, step by step, today.

“I’ve always known that Bonnie was a star,” he says.

“I’ve always known that she was amazingly talented and had amazing drive. She really gives a shit about the important things that matter in music, not just fame and fortune and any of that shit we can lose ourselves in. But even before any of that, I’ve always known that I’d support her. People really identify with her voice and her stage persona and political stance, and how she is socially and professionally.”

Asked what he would say to the 21-year-old version of himself, the kid who was about to steal young Bonnie away from his friend and start a life with her in romance and in music, if given the chance, Taylor didn’t hesitate.

“I’d probably say something to the effect of ‘Just keep going, because it’s gonna work out, and don’t get too down or too up on any one thing.’ The second would be ‘Don’t play music for musicians. Play music for fans.’ It took me so long to realize it’s not about how many notes you can play or about the gear that you have; it’s about the connection you have with the audience. Hanging my hat on the silly compliment when you run into some guitar player is so empty. I want to make memories for other people.”

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Virtual visits conducted by telephone or video chat with a doctor are not an insurance product, health care provider or a health plan. Unless otherwise required, benefits are available only when services are delivered through a Designated Virtual Network Provider. Virtual visits are not intended to address emergency or life-threatening medical conditions and should not be used in those circumstances. Services may not be available at all times, or in all locations, or for all members. Check your benefit plan to determine if these services are available. The Designated Virtual Visit Provider’s reduced rate for a virtual visit is subject to change at any time. Virtual primary care visits are unavailable for members under the age of 18. Telehealth visits only apply for Non-HSA plans. Discount valid until 12/31/22. Certain prescriptions may not be available, and other restrictions may apply. Discount valid only for in-store purchases of eligible Walgreens brand health and wellness products by current members.

Some plans may require copayments, deductibles and/or coinsurance for these benefits. Plans in metal tiers varies and are subject to plan deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance.

This policy has exclusions, limitations, reduction of benefits, and terms under which the policy may be continued in force or discontinued. For costs and complete details of the coverage, review your plan documents, call or write your insurance agent or the company, whichever is applicable.

Medical plan coverage offered by Rocky Mountain Health Maintenance Organization, Incorporated. Administrative services provided by United HealthCare Services, Inc. or their affiliates. © 2021 United HealthCare Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

22NAT00043P CST33697

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DECEMBER 2, 2021

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

FRANCES MARSHALL

King’s Singers return to Boulder with music familiar and new ‘Christmas with The King’s Singers’ will be December 8 in Macky Auditorium

by Peter Alexander

P

at Donnachie can hardly wait to get back onstage.

With an audience. In Boulder.

As a member of The King’s Singers, Dunachie was accustomed to traveling and performing about seven months out of every year. And then COVID hit and—nothing.

“We ended up with two concerts after the 110 we had expected [in 2020], which was really tough,” he says.

Not that the time was wasted. The members of the group worked on details of their business, they presented online concerts from several churches in England, posted songs with the sheet music so people could sing along, and did charitable work for The King’s Singers Global Foundation.

But once the tours started again in September, Dunachie says, “it felt like life was back to normal. And in December we return to the States for a Christmas tour, which I think is a real sign that life is back to normal, and we can get our woolly hats and scarves on.”

Early in the 2021 Christmas tour The King’s Singers will appear at Macky to present “Christmas with the King’s Singers,” at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, December 8. The program will be drawn partly from the group’s latest album, Christmas Carols with The King’s Singers. It will feature some familiar music, including “The Christmas Song” by Mel Tormé and “Ding! Dong! Merrily on High,” as well as some that are less known—unison chants to introduce each half of the concert, “The Quiet Heart” by June Collin, and others.

“At Christmas time, particularly given the year that we’ve just had, what we’re trying to offer is comfort, familiarity, coziness, and that feeling which is called ‘Christmassy,’” Dunachie says. “And so [the concert

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

is] a chance to celebrate not just Christmas music per se, but the phenomenon of coming together.”

Some of the Christmas songs will need no introduction. “I don’t think anyone needs to talk about ‘The Christmas Song’ by Mel Tormé,” Dunachie says. On the other hand, “the section called ‘Celebrations in England,’ there’s some gems in there which I didn’t know before recording the album. ‘The Quiet Heart’ by June Collin, and ‘Balulalow’ by Jamie Burton are absolutely beautiful pieces. “‘Balulalow’ is the first track on the album, and it’s the perfect opening track. It starts on a single unison note that all six of us sing, and it spreads out bit by bit into beautiful, luxurious harmony. It’s a real treasure. “‘The Quiet Heart’ by June Collin is a really simple song in two verses. She’s a composer who worked for the Salvation Army, and they have a musical tradition of their own. And I think the message is really beautiful, all about the calm and stillness at the point of the arrival of Christ in the nativity story. It’s not trumpets and fanfares, but a quiet, understated scene in which He arrives.”

One section of the program features songs that have no particular connection to Christmas at all: a song by the Estonian composer Urmas Sistak titled “Heliseb väljadel”; “If I Can Help Somebody,” by the African-American composer Alma Anderson, a song that Martin Luther King

is songs that are really ON THE BILL: Christwell known in commumas with the King’s nities around the world,” Singers. 7:30 p.m.

Dunachie says. “We were Wednesday, December talking about how Christ8, Macky Auditorium, mas is a time of coming 1595 Pleasant Street, together and so we picked #285ucb, Boulder. these three songs from Tickets: tickets.cudifferent countries where, in presents.org/2366 [each] country, everybody knows all the words—it’s in the DNA of the country.”

The final portion of the program, called “Music for Festive Cheer,” will bring out the most familiar of the Christmas songs and offer everyone a good time.

“That will be our excuse to do some fun stuff, the likes of ‘Jingle Bells,’ and some of the more silly stuff that we do,” Dunachie says. “There’s definitely a handful of real classics, where we’ve done it a million times.”

For those pieces, it’s good that Boulder is early in the tour, he says. Later on “there’s some that you get halfway through and you think, ‘I have no idea what I’ve been doing the last few minutes.’ You can wake up and realize ‘I’m supposed to be singing my solo in a few measures!’”

At the same time, that kind of familiarity bodes well. “They’re some of the best pieces, because they’re the ones that have stood the test of time,” he says. “People really love to hear them.

“They never lose their magic.”

and that was sung by Mahalia Jackson on a recording of King’s favorite hymns; and the well known Mexican song “Cielito lindo.”

“The whole point of that little section of the program

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DECEMBER 2, 2021

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25

E VENTS

EVENTS

If your organization is planning an event of any kind, please email the managing editor at crockett@boulderweekly.com

Frequent Flyers Aerial Dance presents Gravity & Relativity

Opening Reception: ‘RETURNING’: Contemporary Works by Arapaho Artists.

7 p.m. Friday, December 3 and Saturday, December 4; 2 p.m. Sunday, December 5, Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut Street, Boulder.

Tickets: $23-$27, thedairy.org

5-7 p.m. Thursday, December 2, Museum of Boulder, 2205 Broadway, Boulder. Tickets: $8- $10, museumofboulder.org

pany presents Gravity & Relativity,

FRESH: Fall 2021

7:30 p.m. Friday, December 3 and Saturday, December 4. University Theatre, Charlotte York Irey Theatre, 261 University of Colorado, Boulder.

Free, no tickets required, just show up!

Brave Pathways Exhibit Open House

4-7 p.m. December 3, The Collective Community Arts Center, 201 N. Public Road, Lafayette

Author Talk: Ann Patchett—‘These Precious Days,’ with Laura Dern (virtual)

7 p.m. Thursday, December 2.

Tickets: $26.99 to $36.99.

Virtual event URL: bit.ly/3G4fk7n As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the out-

Comedy Underground with Host Luke Gaston, featuring David Testroet, Salma Zaky and Jacob Rupp 8-10 p.m. Friday, December 3, The Louisville Underground, 640 Main Street, Louisville. Tickets: $15-$80 (booth for four $80)

ponders this truth in these wise essays that

Lights of December Parade

6 p.m. Saturday, December 4, Downtown Boulder, 1200 Pearl Street, Boulder

see EVENTS Page 28

For more event listings, go online at boulderweekly.com/events

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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DECEMBER 2, 2021

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27

EVENTS

EVENTS from Page 27

JUST ANNOUNCED

JUST ANNOUNCED

FEB 17 .................................................................................................... DISCO LINES FEB 18 ................................................................................... THE RIVER ARKANSAS MAY 17 ............................................................................................ NILUFER YANYA

FEB 20 ....................................................................................................... SAM BUSH APR 20 ................................................................................................... MURA MASA

THU. DEC 2

FRI. DEC 3

MR. MOTA

THE ROCKY COASTS, KEEP OFF THE GRASS, TOP LIP FRI. DEC 10 ROOSTER & PARTY GURU PRODUCTIONS PRESENT

BLUNTS & BLONDES DJ GANO, PASHMONIX SAT. DEC 11 ROOSTER PRESENTS: HOME ALONE TOUR

PROF

J.PLAZA, ANDREW THOMAS, WILLIE WONKA THU. DEC 16

KINGS OF PRUSSIA + TUMBLEDOWN SHACK FRI. DEC 17

ROBERT GLASPER + CORY HENRY TUE. DEC 7

TETON GRAVITY RESEARCH PRESENTS MOUNTAIN REVELATIONS THU. DEC 9

CHVRCHES

SPECIAL GUEST DONNA MISSAL SAT. DEC 11 13TH ANNUAL

TRACE BUNDY’S ACOUSTIC HOLIDAY GLEN PHILLIPS OF TOAD THE WET SPROCKET TUE. DEC 14 88.5 KGNU PRESENTS: CHRISTMAS IN HAWAII

JAKE SHIMABUKURO FRI. DEC 17

MORSEL

BELL’S BREWERY PRESENTS

HIGH COUNTRY HUSTLE, BUFFALO COMMONS SAT. DEC 18

ARLO MCKINLEY SENORA MAY, EXTRA GOLD FRI. DEC 31

LACUNA: TOM HAMILTON & HOLLY BOWLING AN INTIMATE EVENING OF IMPROVISATION MON. DEC 20 97.3 KBCO PRESENTS

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM SAMMY BRUE

THE TRIP OUT TOUR

THE CRYSTAL METHOD GODLAZER

FRI. JAN 14 SLOW BURN WINTER TOUR

ARTIKAL SOUND SYSTEM, JOEY HARKUM SAT. JAN 15

THE PETTY NICKS EXPERIENCE MOUNTAIN ROSE

SUN. JAN 16 97.3 KBCO, BOULDER WEEKLY & GRATEFUL WEB PRESENT

RADIO 1190 & PARADISE FOUND PRESENT

CRUMB’S NEW YEAR’S EVE BOULDER BASH SAT. JAN 15 RELIX, 97.3 KBCO & GRATEFUL WEB PRESENT

THE JERRY DANCE PARTY FEAT. DJ JERRBROTHER MON. JAN 17

THE SECOND CITY THE ABSOLUTE BEST FRIGGIN’ TIME OF YOUR LIFE TUE. JAN 18

SWATKINS

LUCINDA WILLIAMS AND HER BAND BUICK 6

THU. JAN 20

WED. JAN 19

THE UNLIKELY CANDIDATES

PARTY GURU PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS

FISHER

AMZY

FRI. JAN 21

FRI. JAN 21

GOTH BABE SAT JAN 22

THE LOSERS CLUB, DAYSHAPER, HELLOCENTRAL

88.5 KGNU & PARTY GURU PRODUCTIONS PRESENT

DIRTWIRE

MON. JAN 24

GONE GONE BEYOND, BLOSSOMN

EIVØR

TUE. FEB 1

ANAÏS MITCHELL + BONNY LIGHT HORSEMAN

EMILY JANE WHITE THU. JAN 27

WOOLI

TRIVECTA, ACE AURA, SHANK AARON FRI. JAN 28

FEB 2 ......................................................................................... STEVE VAI FEB 3 ......................................................................................... SON VOLT FEB 8 ......................................................................................... BAD SUNS FEB 26 ............................................. GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR MAR 7 ...................................................................................... LOS LOBOS

JIMKATA JAN 29 ................................................................................ MELLOWPUNK FEB 6 ........................................................................................ PASSAFIRE FEB 19 .................................................................. JANE AND MATTHEWS FEB 25 ............................................................................................ SPORTS FEB 26 ............................................................................................ MEMBA

28

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Den Plays with Strangers.

6 p.m. Bootstrap Brewing Company, 142 Pratt Street, Longmont. Free.

Peak to Peak Webinar Concert Series: Middle Eastern/ North African Jewish Poetic Songs (Piyyutim)—From Pulpit to Pop Chart (virtual).

7 p.m. Free. Virtual Event URL: bit.ly/31npIrQ Robert Glasper + Cory Henry. 7 p.m. Boulder Theater, 2032 14th Street, Boulder. Tickets: $35-$40.

Friday, December 3

Mojomama. 6 p.m. Bootstrap Brewing Company, 142 Pratt Street, Longmont. Free.

Chandler Huntley. 6:30 p.m. The Tune Up Taproom, 2355 30th Street, Boulder.

Saturday, December 4

STEVEN LEE BRUNER, better known as Thundercat, picked 4. He’s played with artists across genres, from Herbie Hancock to Kendrick Lamaar to Louis Cole. Catch him with Channel Tres at Mission Ballroom.

4 Tell & the Aces. 6 p.m. Bootstrap Brewing Company, 142 Pratt Street, Longmont.

Ravin’wolf. 6 p.m. Boco Cider, 1501 Lee Hill Drive, Unit 14, Boulder. Price: Free.

Denver Comes Alive: Ramble on Revival feat. Oteil Burbridge, Eric Krasno, Steve Kimock, Holly Bowling, Jeff Sipe, Jen Hartswick, and Skerik with Tank and The Bangas, Circles Around the Sun, Judith Hill and DJ Logic.

5 p.m. Mission Ballroom, 4242 Wynkoop Street, Denver. Tickets: $29.50$99.50.

105.5 THE COLORADO SOUND PRESENTS

LAWRENCE

BURY MIA

Thursday, December 2

FRI. DEC 31

RAMAKHANDRA

BUMPIN UGLIES

CONCERTS

Sunday, December 5

Boulder Friends of Jazz Jam Session. 1 p.m. Avalon Ballroom, 6185 Arapahoe Road, Boulder.

Finn O’Sullivan. 7 p.m. Gold Hill Inn, 401 Main Street, Gold Hill (Boulder).

Price: Free Opeth / Mastodon with Zeal & Ardor. 6 p.m. Mission Ballroom, 4242 Wynkoop Street, Denver. Tickets: $49.50-$99.

Tuesday, December 7

Thundercat with Channel Tres. 7 p.m. Mission Ballroom, 4242 Wynkoop Street, Denver. Tickets: $35.95-$79.95.

Boulder premier of TGR’s Mountain Revelations. at 7:30 p.m. Boulder Theater. Tickets: $15.

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

K for Kane

CITIZEN KANE is available

‘Citizen Kane’ returns to The Criterion Collection

by Michael J. Casey

F

or many, it’s the greatest of all once said of Welles, time. But when “All of us will owe him it was released everything.”

80 years ago, Citizen Yet, Kane is not Kane was a death sentence. The movie’s dreamers and their director and star, Orson Welles, came THE CRITERION COLLECTION to Hollywood by way reality. This is where of the stage and radio with a contract that made headlines: Total control and him, was in his 40s when he wrote the he hadn’t, no studio would have let him Hearst was 78 when Citizen Kane came out in 1941 and Hollywood usually waits until someone is disarmed or dead before they start Welles was 25 at the time, and not only was Hearst ready to lambast the leftist

to get the one thing he lost as a child.

Hearst’s social circle. He was also a Kane’s signature scenes, he gives Bernstein (Everett Sloane) the monologue of a lifetime: “A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn’t

Hollywood moguls. There’s Did you catch that Welles was 25 when he made the movie many count as the greatest of all time? That’s one of sives have held Kane

and on it there was a girl waiting to get saw her for one second, and she didn’t that girl.”

Citizen Kane bet a month hasn’t gone by without someone sitting down somewhere and

et Kane

Kane as his

movie as a story about a boy and his the way.

Kane launched the collection under the newest format, 4K

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ing Welles’ rarely seen 1934 short The Hearts of Age tary The Complete “Citizen Kane,” and hours and hours of Kane goodies. linger for a lifetime. But the greatest how long time marches on.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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BY ROB BREZSNY ARIES

MARCH 21-APRIL 19: It’s a favorable time to get excited about THURSDAY DECEMBER 2 SHIFT

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THURSDAY DECEMBER 2

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MOONTRICKS, MOTIFV + MORE!

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THURSDAY JANUARY 20 DUAL VENUE

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DEFUNK W/ MEGAN HAMILTON FRIDAY & SATURDAY JANUARY 28-29:

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NATE SMITH + KINFOLK & MAKAYA MCCRAVEN

D-VIBES 30TH BIRTHDAY JAM THURSDAY DECEMBER 23 SHIFT

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SHIFT G-SPACE FRIDAY & SATURDAY JANUARY 14-15 DUAL VENUE!

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FEAT ANDY HALL, CHRIS PANDOLFI, PAUL HOFFMAN, MICHAEL TRAVIS & ANDREW ALTMAN

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PASSAFIRE

SATURDAY FEBRUARY 5

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FEAT JASON HANN (SCI), JOEL CUMMINS (UMPHREY’S MCGEE) & DAVE WATTS (MOTET) THURSDAY FEBRUARY 10

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THURSDAY FEBRUARY 24

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DIRTY DOZEN BRASS BAND SATURDAY FEBRUARY 26

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your long-range future—and to entertain possibilities that have previously been on the edges of your awareness. I’d love to see you open your heart to the sweet dark feelings you’ve been sensing, and open your mind to the disruptive but nourishing ideas you need, and open your gut to the rumbling hunches that are available. Be brave, Aries! Strike up conversations with the unexpected, the unknown, and the undiscovered.

TAURUS

APRIL 20-MAY 20: A Tumblr blogger named Evan (lotad. tumblr.com) addressed a potential love interest. “Do you like sleeping, because so do I,” he wrote. “We should do it together sometime.” You might want to extend a similar invitation, Taurus. Now is a ripe time for you to interweave your subconscious mind with the subconscious mind of an ally you trust. The two of you could generate extraordinary healing energy for each other as you lie together, dozing in the darkness. Other recommended activities: meditating together; fantasizing together; singing together; making spiritual love together. (PS: If you have no such human ally, sleep and meditate with a beloved animal or imaginary friend.)

GEMINI

MAY 21-JUNE 20: Gemini author Chuck Klosterman writes, “It’s far easier to write why something is terrible than why it’s good.” That seems to be true for many writers. However, my life’s work is in part a rebellion against doing what’s easy. I don’t want to chronically focus on what’s bad and sick and desolate. Instead, I aspire to devote more of my energy to doing what Klosterman implies is hard, which is to write sincerely (but not naively) about the many things that are good and redemptive and uplifting. In light of your current astrological omens, Gemini, I urge you to adopt my perspective for your own use in the next three weeks. Keep in mind what philosopher Robert Anton Wilson said: “An optimistic mindset finds dozens of possible solutions for every problem that the pessimist regards as incurable.”

CANCER

JUNE 21-JULY 22: An organization in Turkey decided to construct a new building to house its workers. The Saruhanbey Knowledge, Culture, and Education Foundation chose a plot in the city of Manisa. But there was a problem. A three-centuries-old pine tree stood on the land. Local authorities would not permit it to be cut down. So architects designed a building with spaces and holes that fully accommodated the tree. I recommend you regard this marvel as a source of personal inspiration in the coming weeks and months.

How could you work gracefully with nature as you craft your future masterpiece or labor of love? How might you work around limitations to create useful, unusual beauty?

LIBRA

SEPT. 23-OCT. 22: “The problem with putting two and two together is that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get 22.” Author Dashiell Hammett said that, and now I’m passing it on to you—just in time for a phase of your cycle when putting two and two together will probably not bring four, but rather 22 or some other irregularity. I’m hoping that since I’ve given you a heads-up, it won’t be a problem.

On the contrary. You will be prepared and will adjust faster than anyone else—thereby generating a dose of exotic good fortune.

SCORPIO

OCT. 23-NOV. 21: In her poem “Is/Not,” Scorpio poet Margaret Atwood tells a lover, “You are not my doctor, you are not my cure, nobody has that power, you are merely a fellow traveler.” I applaud her for stating an axiom I’m fond of, which is that no one, not even the person who loves you best, can ever be totally responsible for fixing everything wrong in your life. However, I do think Atwood goes too far. On some occasions, certain people can indeed provide us with a measure of healing. And we must be receptive to that possibility. We shouldn’t be so pathologically self-sufficient that we close ourselves off from tender help. One more thing: Just because that help may be imperfect doesn’t mean it’s useless and should be rejected.

SAGITTARIUS

NOV. 22-DEC. 21: “All my days I have longed equally to travel the right road and to take my own errant path,” wrote Norwegian-Danish novelist Sigrid Undset. I think she succeeded in doing both. She won a Nobel Prize for Literature.

Her trilogy about a 14th-century Norwegian woman was translated into 80 languages. I conclude that for her—as well as for you in the coming weeks and months—traveling the right road and taking your own errant path will be the same thing.

CAPRICORN

DEC. 22-JAN. 19: Capricorn author Susan Sontag unleashed

a bizarre boast, writing, “One of the healthiest things about me—my capacity to survive, to bounce back, to prosper—is intimately connected with my biggest neurotic liability: my facility in disconnecting from my feelings.” Everything about her statement makes me scream NO! I mean, I believe this coping mechanism worked for her; I don’t begrudge her that. But as a student of psychology and spirituality, I know that disconnecting from feelings is, for most of us, the worst possible strategy if we want to be healthy and sane. And I will advise you to do the opposite of Sontag in the coming weeks. December is Stay Intimately Connected with Your Feelings Month.

AQUARIUS

JAN. 20-FEB. 18: In some small towns in the Philippines,

LEO

JULY 23-AUG. 22: Author Melissa Broder wrote a preposterous

essay in which she ruminated, “Is fake love better than real love? Real love is responsibility, compromise, selflessness, being present, and all that shit. Fake love is magic, excitement, false hope, infatuation, and getting high off the potential that another person is going to save you from yourself.”

I will propose, Leo, that you bypass such ridiculous thinking about love in the coming weeks and months. Here’s why: There’s a strong chance that the real love at play in your life will feature magic and excitement, even as it requires responsibility, compromise, selflessness, and being present.

VIRGO

AUG. 23-SEPT. 22: Virgo author Andre Dubus III describes times when “I feel stupid, insensitive, mediocre, talentless and vulnerable—like I’m about to cry any second—and wrong.” That sounds dreadful, right? But it’s not dreadful for him. Just the opposite. “I’ve found that when that happens,” he concludes, “it usually means I’m writing pretty well, pretty deeply, pretty rawly.” I trust you will entertain a comparable state sometime soon, Virgo. Even if you’re not a writer, the bounty and fertility that emerge from this immersion in vulnerability will invigorate you beyond what you can imagine.

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people can be punished and fined for gossiping. Some locals have become reluctant to exchange tales about the sneaky, sexy, highly entertaining things their neighbors are doing. They complain that their freedom of speech has been curtailed. If you lived in one of those towns, I’d advise you to break the law in the coming weeks. In my astrological opinion, dynamic gossip should be one of your assets.

Staying well-informed about the human comedy will be key for your ability to thrive.

PISCES

FEB. 19-MARCH 20: “Originality consists in thinking for your-

self, and not in thinking unlike other people,” wrote Piscean author James Fitzjames Stephen (1829–1894). Another way to say it: Being rebellious is not inherently creative. If you primarily define yourself by rejecting and reacting against someone’s ideas, you are being controlled by those ideas.

Please keep this in mind, dear Pisces. I want you to take full advantage of your astrological potential during the next 12 months, which is to be absolutely original. Your perceptions and insights will be unusually lucid if you protect yourself from both groupthink and a compulsive repudiation of groupthink.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

STAY CONNECTED

BY DAN SAVAGE Dear Dan: So, my husband (42-year-old straight male) and I (38-year-old bi female) have had a closed relationship so far, but we have an active fantasy life. We’ve been together for about four years, and we both had our fair share of partners (casual and serious) before that. We like to talk about fantasies involving other people during sex, be they actual (past partners) or imagined (my beautiful he ate my pussy, I asked him about all the pussies he’s enjoyed in the past and he brought up one of his exes—a relationship that ended 10 years before we met—and he said he sometimes thought about her when he went down on and/or fucked subsequent partners, including me. This turned me on. A lot.

I started bringing her up every now and then while we fucked, I asked him more about her, I fantasized about meeting her and eating the pussy he enjoyed so much. Like other past partners, she became part of the mental/verbal porn reel we sometimes enjoy during sex.

Then one day, in an unrelated conversation, it came out that he’d been engaged to her, that the reason they broke up was because they couldn’t make a long-distance relationship work after he moved to the country where we live, and that it took him years to get over her. This killed it for me. Not only that, but I also now feel weird about all of the times we fantasized about her in the past. It’s not like he did anything serious the relationship was or why it ended—but I can’t shake the irrational feeling there was an omission. I sometimes think about past experiences during masturbation or sex, but never about serious partners—never about men I’ve lived with, been married to, or had a child with. Those experiences are too emotionally loaded to mix in with my current sex life in a healthy, detached way. I know my husband may process/feel things differently, but I can’t help but equate what he was doing to me fantasizing about my ex-husband during sex, which I haven’t done and would feel weird as fuck even contemplating. I don’t see her as a threat—they’re not in touch and she lives in another hemisphere—and I believe him when he says he has no sigincluding her. But knowing she was one

his life makes fantasizing about her— out loud, with me—feel “off.” I don’t just have this feeling just about her now, but about his past overall. How do I shake this? Thoughts?

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Dear TOTITO: If thinking and talking about your husband’s past stop thinking and talking about your husband’s past. But if you want to get back to enjoying these fantasies with your husband—dirty talk about your previous sex partners—you’re going to need to reason with yourself.

Yes, it was a serious relationship, but they never married or had kids. And if they had wanted to be together, they would’ve found a way to make it work despite the distance. . . . Words are cheap and “engaged” is just a word. It’s but in the end it’s just air.

You say been with your 42-year-old husband for four years. His relationship

boulderweekly.com

before you two met. So, that means your husband was at most 28 years old when he broke off his engagement with his ex and assuming they’d been dating for a few years, he was what?

In his mid-20s when they met? That means his prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain involved in executive functions like decision making, long-term planning, and higher reasoning, wasn’t even fully formed when he proposed to this woman.

So, you have a choice. You can that they were engaged or you can look at the other facts in evidence—that they both chose the place where they lived over the relationship, how old they were at the time they got engaged— and see the relationship as far less makes it sound.

All that said, if hearing about the pussies in your husband’s past isn’t doing anything for your pussy right now, tell your husband you don’t want to hear about them for the moment. If you miss dirty talk during sex, instead of talking about hot sex you’ve both had all the hot sex you’re going to have in the future.

Send questions to mail@savagelove.net, follow Dan on Twitter @fakedansavage, and visit savage.love.

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JOHN LEHNDORFF

Taste your place this holiday season Beat the supply chain blues with the best locally crafted food and drink stocking stuffers

by John Lehndorff CURED MEATS from Il Porcellino Salumi, above.

PICKLED OKRA Pickles in Nederland, right

M

aking a holiday meal? Packing a food basket? Planning a get together? Sending a taste of home? Needing a treat to hand to a

Of course you are! Food and beverages are the very beating heart of the holidays from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day. Why not spend those dollars on locally produced artisan edible treats?

You do it to support businesses and cut down on the fossil fuel impact, and because Boulder County produces an beverages that are simply excellent.

You can start with the foods just named as 2022 Food Awards, recognizing those making “tasty, authentic and responsible food in order to humanize and reform our American food culture.”

Local nominees include (Boulder), Pickled Okra from Sesame Swing Quinoa Crackers from New Beat Foods (Longmont), Maple Pretzel Crunch from On (Longmont).

There are no supply chain problems when you do your holiday gift and food shopping at the Boulder County Farmers Market’s Winter Market, December 4 and 5 in Longmont. The 100-plus vendors include many market regulars such as Aspen Moon

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The nice thing about food is that no matter who’s on your list, they all eat. A gift card to a local independent eatery is too easy. Consider the following curated collection of palate pleasers.

The charcuterie board from here

Charcuterie boards are the perfect solution for holiday nibbling, but the foods don’t need to be shipped in from thousands of miles away.

For cheeses, how about Longmont-made smoked chevre, soft-ripened Snowdrop, or Origin A2 Brie, all crafted by Haystack Mountain?

For the meat, choose the award-winning salumi from Denver’s Il Porcellino Salumi.

You can’t miss with the traditional Finocchiona laced with toasted fennel seeds, fennel pollen, and ground fennel. Il Porcellino has crafted a limited amount of Fruitcake Salami dotted with cranberry, walnut, orange, and port wine.

Check with the kitchen at Boulder’s Le French Café for two exquisite house-made cracker-toppers: foie gras and duck rillettes. Meanwhile, local chicken farm, Alpine Eggs, now offers fresh chicken liver pate.

Finish the charcuterie board with MECO Cheddar Crackers, New Beat Quinoa Crackers and Bolder Chips plus cultured butter from Lyons’ La Bella Crema and Highland Honey.

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

Give the gift of fungus

Fungus is the ideal gift for that family member who can’t stop talking about their gut health or the budding D.I.Y-er who makes everything from scratch.

Lafayette-based Humble Fungus offers everything you need to start growing culinary and medicinal mushrooms at home, plus textbooks and online cultivation and information on making cheese, yogurt, wine, pickles, beer and kombucha.

Bonus treat: A slab of pinto bean and millet tempeh from Boulder’s Project Umami Foods.

The hotter the better gift

We all have friends and relatives who regularly enjoy hurting themselves with capsaicin-drenched sauces and foods. For those hot heads, assemble a basket boasting FishSki Provisions Jalapeño Cheddar Grits (Boulder), Green Belly GuaFlakes (Boulder), Chiporro Sauce Co. Serrano Thai Salsa (Longmont), Seed Ranch Umami Hot Sauce (Boulder), Moksha dark chocolate with Pueblo green chilies (Boulder), Riskin’s Dragon (chile) Bitters (Boulder), and Grove Street Alchemy’s sneaky spicy New Mexico Hatch Chiles Liqueur (Longmont).

The gift of culinary know-how

For home cooks who are hungry and also have an insatiable appetite for culinary knowledge, gift them a class or a local cookbook. Local cooking classes are available at The Art of Cheese (theartofcheese.com), Food Lab (foodlabboulder. com), Journey Culinary (journeyculinary.com) and through CozyMeal (cozymeal.com).

Recent locally written cookbooks include: • Let’s Cook Japanese Food! Everyday Recipes for Authentic Dishes (Weldon Owen) by Boulder author Amy Kaneko • Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue (University of North Carolina Press) by Denver author

Hello Boulder!

We can’t wait to welcome you through every season ahead. Opt for a cozy indoor dining experience with enhanced cleaning protocols and our air filtration system or enjoy all of your Japango favorites on one of our four heated patios. Prefer to indulge in the comfort of your home? We can do that too with curbside pick up.

Hope to see you soon!

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by Miller’s book.

• Friuli Food and Wine—Frasca Cooking from Northern Italy’s Mountains, Vineyards, and Seaside (Ten Speed Press) by Bobby Stuckey, Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson and Meredith Erickson • The Fort Restaurant Cookbook: New Foods of the Old West from the Landmark Colorado Restaurant (Two Dot) by Holly Arnold Kinney • A Bite of Boulder: Cooking at Home with Boulder’s Best Restaurants by Jessica Benjamin

Voted East County’s BEST Gluten Free Menu

Satisfy the sweet teeth Toffee in Nederland, and these sweets all made in Boulder: classic honey-soaked baklava from Baklava Unlimited, Cocomel sugar-free coconut milk caramels, white chocolate pistachio, Fortuna bean-to-bar Milk Chocolate with Puffed Quinoa, Moksha bean-to-bar non-dairy milk chocolate, and The Farmer’s Porch Cinnamon Cacao Heirloom Pumpkin Seeds. Top the package with a bottle of local sweetness: Bookcliff Vineyards Moscato 2020 wine, Redstone Meadery Juniper Berry Mountain Honey Wine, or Ricardo’s Decaf Coffee Liqueur.

Local food news

Boulder Baked has closed its downtown bakery location and reopened at 5290 Arapahoe Ave., former site of Heifer and the Hen Ice Cream . . . Meta Burger, the local plant-based, fast-casual restaurant chain, will open soon at 1905 29th St., former site of Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh . . . Perhaps the most “Boulder” beverage currently available is Boulder Bushel at BOCO Cider, a dry hard cider made from apples harvested at Boulder homes and pressed on the autumn equinox.

Words to chew on

“Dining is and always was a great artistic opportunity.”—Architect Frank Lloyd Wright John Lehndorff hosts Radio Nibbles at 8:20 a.m. Thursdays on KGNU (88.5 FM, kgnu.org).

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

The pig that saved Avery

Hog Heaven Imperial Red IPA returns for a limited time

by Michael J. Casey

S

tay in one place long enough, and you’ll see things come and go, only to come back around again. It’s been over 40 years since Boulder County got into the brewing game, and in that time, brewers and breweries have opened and closed, beer styles have fallen in and out of favor, and customer habits have shifted on a dime.

It takes real conviction to stay in this business, but it takes “We talk about Hog as the beer that saved the brewery,” Adam Avery says. “It really was because it got us in with out-of-state distribution.”

As the name might indicate, Avery is the founder of his namesake brewery, Avery Brewing Company, and the beer he’s talking about is Hog Heaven—one of Avery’s brewed in Boulder County.

That might sound like hyperbole, but it’s not. When Avery released Hog Heaven in 1998, Boulder County, and Colorado in general, was amber ale country. Led by the success of New Belgium’s Fat Tire and bolstered by the popularity of easy-drinking brewpub ales, the craft beer scene was considerably less hoppy than it is today.

Brewer Gordon Knight of High Country, Twisted Pine, and Wolf Tongue fame is often pointed to as one of the what to make of Knight’s bracingly bitter beers.

And they certainly didn’t know what to make of Avery’s hoppy IPA, released in 1996. Bartenders would call up Avery and tell him to pick up his kegs. Customers didn’t want it. It was too bitter.

Avery had been embracing hops since he opened Point Amber Ale, Out of Bounds Stout, and Ellie’s Brown Ale. Sounds typical, but in Avery’s hands, they were anything but. because our amber was a big amber,” he says.

It came down to “a do-ordie” moment. “We’re going to make a big monster beer that’s highly hopped, highly bitter, highly alcoholic,” Avery says.

You know that adage of leaning into your strengths?

Well, Avery took one look at his unsellable hoppy beer and decided to turn up the volume.

The result was Hog Heaven—named after a bike race co-owner Larry Avery read about in the paper—garnet red in the glass, big and rich in the mouth. Brewed with Columbus hops, two-row barley, and caramel malts, Hog Heaven weighed in at 9.2 percent alcohol by volume and sported over 100 international bittering

AVERY BREWING COMPANY

“Dry-hopped Barleywine-style ale” on the label. Call it what you will; Hog turned Avery’s luck around.

“If not the beer that turned it around, it was the mentality of how we should use our brewery to do what we want to do,” Avery says. And what Avery wanted to do was push boundaries, “Making beers for a very, very small and select group of people.”

But that small and select group turned out to be pretty big. A strong beer festival in California invited Avery’s Hog Heaven as a featured beer, and in attendance was Greg Koch of Stone Brewing—no stranger to hoppy ales himself. Koch was looking to self-distribute his beer and wanted to bring on other brands. He found a kindred spirit in Avery.

“My concentration was and has been producing

of what ‘beer’ should be,” Avery says.

The timing couldn’t have been better. The tides were shifting among beer drinkers, and a new generation was looking for something that tasted totally unlike anything their parents might have had in their fridges. Hog Heaven opened the door for an entire line of big beers for Avery, 15,000 in 2009.

And now Hog Heaven returns for a limited time to Gunbarrel and at liquor stores as part of Avery’s Hop Variety pack.

Michael J. Casey is the author of Boulder County Beer, a refreshing history of how a collection of young entrepreneurs like Avery turned the cities of Boulder, Longmont, and beyond into ground zero for craft beer in the Centennial State.

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BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

JOHN LEHNDORFF

Taste of the Week

Caprese panini and Vietnamese chilled noodle salad @ Community Table Kitchen

by John Lehndorff

I

f I hadn’t stopped by the Della Cava Medical Pavilion at Boulder’s Foothills Medical Campus to get my COVID booster jab, I probably never would have eaten at Community Table Kitchen. The eatery near a large parking garage and the Boulder bike path offers a great-sounding breakfast and lunch menu featuring scratch-made soups, Moe’s bagel sandwiches, turkey club wraps, quinoa salads, oatmeal raisin cookies, quiche, grilled vegetable quesadillas, and hot drinks ranging from coffee to Sherpa Chai.

I sat on the sunny patio and dug into a Vietnamese noodle salad and a caprese panini. The substantial salad tops fresh greens and chewy chilled rice noodles with daikon radish, pineapple, pickled ginger, peppery sprouts, carrots, cukes, and a sweet spicy vinaigrette dressing. I added grilled chicken.

JOHN LEHNDORFF For the sandwich, lots of creamy fresh mozzarella cheese and spread with basil pesto, then pressed and grilled until gooey.

The fact that the food is very good matters, but it’s more important that Community Table Kitchen is a social enterprise business that supports Bridge House. That Boulder homelessness and food insecurity.

More than 100 individuals have been trained in the culinary arts under the kitchen’s executive chef, John Trejo.

Besides the cafe, Community Table Kitchen supports itself as a caterer, a take-and-bake food service, and a bridgehouse.org/community-table-kitchen

Another roadfood attraction

I’ve always liked toasted pine nuts, especially on soft Italian cookies, but roasted piñon nuts are something completely different.

I fell for them years ago during an impromptu family trip to New Mexico. We bought a bag of freshly harvested and roasted Pinus Edulis and found them to be among the most craveable natural foods on the planet. They taste like toasted creaminess. You crack and remove the delicate shell, or skip that part and crunch them whole. It’s a good source of fiber.

Because they are wild-harvested and only found in New Mexico and Southern Colorado, roasted pinon nuts are hard to find and always quite pricey. The only places I’ve found them locally are at Lulu’s Farm, 13201 E. 144th Ave. in Brighton, and The Chili Guys, 5501 Federal Blvd. in Denver.

Culinary calendar

It may seem premature to start marking your calendars for Colorado’s biggest annual food and beverage gatherings coming next year, but each of the following is expected to return to its former in-person glory in 2022. Tickets to each typically sell out quickly after they are put on sale.

The Taste of Vail is April 6-9. tasteofvail.com The Aspen Food & Wine Classic is June 17-19. foodandwine.com The Colorado Mountain Wine Festival is Sept. 17 in Palisade. coloradowinefest.com The Great American Beer Festival’s 40th anniversary is October 6-8 in Denver. greatamericanbeerfestival.com

JOHN LEHNDORFF

What to do with too much apple cider

syrup that can be used on pancakes. You

I

See, I got busy and a little distracted and forgot about it for a while. That’s how

bought a gallon of Honey Crisp apple cider when it was on sale months ago.

I wasn’t going to drink it because it’s a boring-tasting cider. It wasn’t clear what it would become until I saw an old recipe for boiled cider. It wasn’t complicated. I put one gallon of cider in a large sauce pan and simmered it slowly for about eight hours until it was reduced down to a few kitchen all day.

When the cider is one-eighth of its original volume it becomes a honey-like

BOULDER COUNTY’S INDEPENDENT VOICE

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DECEMBER 2, 2021

liquid through a sieve, cheesecloth, or coffee

cider caramel that is intensely sweet, tart and apple-y. I may rub spoonfuls in dark chocolate, roll in toasted hazelnuts, pastries.

You can infuse clementine peel, cinnamon sticks, vanilla beans, whiskey, salt, or star anise by adding them in the final hour of simmering. Stored in your refrigerator, boiled cider will keep almost indefinitely. l

37

Enlisting stoners

couldn’t get in.”

That’s no longer exactly the case today.

Now, recruits who fail a urine test can apply for a “waiver”—a document that allows the Army to reconsider recruits who would otherwise be turned away (for having a criminal history, behavioral health issues, weight issues, failing a marijuana test, etc.). If approved for the waiver, and if they pass their second urine test, the recruit is eligible for enlistment.

“So you have this situation where people are maybe using marijuana legally in their state. And yet if they want to enlist, they need to potentially get a waiver in order to join the military. The big issue, of course, is how do they perform in the military once they get the waiver?” Asch says.

“Are these just regular, high quality people and they’re going to perform just fine? We simply didn’t know.”

Those were the questions the Army brought to the RAND Corporation.

And because of her background as a labor economist, with a career focus on military personnel issues, Asch was an easy choice to lead the study.

For its analysis, RAND focused on reviewing all the waivers the Army had approved and the subsequent performance history of the soldiers who received them. They then compared those individuals’ performance against all other Army recruits to gauge how their “drug use” or other issues affected their capability as a recruit.

Asch says she didn’t have a hypothesis going into the analysis; she had an open mind about whatever it was that they were going to discover.

Still, she was surprised by the results.

The U.S. Army doesn’t like to recruit cannabis users —but the argument against them is losing ground

by Will Brendza

A

s a branch of the federal government, the U.S. Army frowns on all things marijuana.

For decades, if someone wanted to serve this country, they had to have a completely cannabis-free history and cannabis-clean record.

Recruits who’d used in the past or failed a single drug test were immediately disqualified from service. Even today, if a hopeful recruit consecutively fails two urine tests they are automatically and permanently disqualified from enlisting—not just in the Army, but in any branch of the military.

It’s the product of stigma and enduring misconceptions born of America’s War on Drugs that still surround the plant.

However, as cannabis legalization has swept the nation, the U.S. Army has had to soften that position somewhat.

And a recent analysis by RAND Corporation, done on behalf of the Army itself, suggests it could be softened even more.

That’s because, as RAND’s analysis indicates, there is no statistically significant relationship between someone’s history of use and their performance as a soldier—at least, none in most cases.

“Typically—no pun intended—[the Army] weeds out people who have marijuana in their background,” says Beth Asch, lead author on the RAND Corporation’s analysis. “Historically, many years ago, if you said, ‘I’ve smoked marijuana,’ then you

TWO LOCATIONS

“We found [no] evidence of higher attrition by people who came in with a history of marijuana,” Asch says. That means the recruits who’d been issued a waiver for marijuana use performed no worse than those who hadn’t.

The first of RAND’s key findings reads: “Contrary to expectations, waivered recruits and recruits with a documented history of marijuana or behavioral health conditions are not uniformly riskier across all dimensions. In some cases, they are historically more likely to perform better.”

And: “The legalization of marijuana has not resulted in worse recruit outcomes, and there is no strong evidence that changes in marijuana legislation have substantially changed recruit outcomes.”

“I wasn’t expecting that,” says Asch.

They also found that “accession” (i.e., rank promotion) isn’t affected much by cannabis use, either.

“So those were some of the good things,” says Asch. “But it was kind of a mixed bag.”

For instance, she says, if a recruit didn’t finish their first term in the Army, it was more likely that it was a recruit with a history of marijuana, alcohol, and other drug use.

However, all of the observed adverse outcomes were mitigated by three important factors, according to Asch.

“We definitely found that it’s possible to reduce the likelihood of these adverse effects if people come in with higher aptitude, a high school diploma, [and/or] who are older,” she says.

In light of these findings, the Army is now being forced to reflect on their policies concerning cannabis and incoming recruits. It may still be a long time before they start including joints in our boys’ rations, but it could be a significant step towards greater cannabis leniency from a very serious federal entity.

Asch wasn’t comfortable commenting on what this research means in the context of federal legalization, but she was comfortable concluding, “If [a recruit] was just somebody who failed a pee test, the [adverse] effects were minor . . . There are definitely ways in which these individuals perform just as well as people who don’t come in with that history [of cannabis use].”

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